Dictionaries Pulled From Classrooms For Sexual Terms: Right Or Wrong?

*Warning: Shy readers look away.*In California, a Riverside County school district pulled dictionaries off the shelves of fourth and fifth-grade classrooms because the books included the term "oral sex." I think this is a bit much.

Apparently an elementary-school student stumbled upon the term when looking through one of the brand-new dictionaries. It's unclear how the child's parent dealt with this. And, to speculate, if the child did ask what it meant, perhaps the parent could have just explained it was a "grown-up word" and moved on to math homework or an after-school snack.

The books are now in review to see if they should be permanently removed from the school. Question: Are they going to remove computers from the classrooms and libraries too? I just googled "oral sex." I expected some delightful pictures to come up; instead, the first hit was from Wikipedia, and it provided a very educated and concise definition and even an image of a man performing cunnilingus on a woman. It wasn't a Girls Gone Wild photo either. It was a drawing by 19th-century Italian artist Francesco Hayez. Will I want my fourth-grader reading about oral sex in a dictionary or online someday? No, but I agree with this parent's response to the dictionaries being pulled:

"Censorship in the schools, really?" parent Emanuel Chavez said to the Riverside, Calif., newspaper The Press-Enterprise. "If the kids are exposed to it, it's up to the parents to explain it to them at their level."

Exactly. So the student randomly found the term in the dictionary. Maybe one day he'll randomly tune in to The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which airs on the ABC Family channel at 8 P.M. Recent plotlines have included masturbation, sex as a means to get back at someone and, yes, oral sex--not to mention that the show is focused on a 15-year-old mom. Sure, parents can regulate what their kids watch, but just as nothing stopped this student from flipping through the dictionary, nothing can prevent children from flipping through the channels and stopping out of curiosity when they hear the word "sex," which is said about 1,000 times per episode in Secret Life. Sex is everywhere. The real world is a scary place for parents, but sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and get a grip. Oh boy, that's my .02!

What do you think Storked! readers? Is it nuts to pull dictionaries from a classroom when sex is everywhere else? How old were you when you learned about oral sex? How did you learn about it? HBO? Google? Random girl talk? Discuss my gems!